"I think," she said to Edna as they walked home across the campus, "that I would like to go to bed and stay there forever."
But, with other examinations crowding close, and equally important matters looming up in the chain of days immediately ahead, anything like a halt was not to be thought of; and Janet, with the rest of the girls, found herself caught in a whirl of events which bore her along to Class Day, with Commencement Day just ahead. It gave her a great thrill to think of the latter. She would be a sophomore after that, no longer a freshman with perked up opinions and bewildered ideas.
She would come back another year with an exact knowledge of what college life was, and there would be other freshmen who would have to learn, as she had learned, things not taught in books, who would be bewildered, and would fight hard for their opinions. Nell Deford and Becky Burdett would have passed out "into the wide, wide world" with the other "grand old seniors," but Rosalie would be there still, herself a senior.
She was disturbed in her meditations by the rush of feet along the corridor, and the entering the room of a crowd of girls.
"Where are you, Janet?" cried Lee Penrose. "Gracious, girl, don't you know what time it is? You mustn't be mooning here. Have you forgotten that this is Class Day?"
Janet turned and looked over the group of faces grown familiar to her these past months. "I'm coming," she said. "I had finished college when you came in, but I suppose I must do it all over again." She perched her college cap upon her head and arranged the tassel carefully. "Doesn't it strike you all as pathetic?" she said, when she had adjusted it.
"Does what strike us as pathetic?" asked Lee. "What's the matter with you this morning, Janet?"
"Nothing, except that any change makes me pensive."
"Even small change?" asked Lee laughing at her own nonsense.
Janet was too serious to notice her. "Even the small change of altering the position of a tassel that you have worn in one way for nearly a year. After Commencement Day, I'll never be a freshman any more."